>The success of iMessage and the entire Apple ecosystem in the US proves that a walled garden is exactly what people trust and want and are willing to pay hands

>The success of iMessage and the entire Apple ecosystem in the US proves that a walled garden is exactly what people trust and want and are willing to pay handsomely for the privilege of being part of one. People don't care about open, closed or whatever. They care about being able to send a message to others. If only 10 % of your friends are on signal, but 100% are on iMessage, most will just use iMessage. So the success of iMessage (and the apple stonewall) is arguably just the success of the iPhone. > Seriously, get out of the tech bubble for a while and see that most people have no idea what computer brand they have or what their OS is called and they don't even care. They just want to click the internet icon and start browsing memes, play candy crush or watch youtube. You're basically making exactly my point. They don't care, they want to be able to browse, message, play, watch stuff, etc. They also wouldn't care if their messaging app would support different protocols, as long as they're just able to easily message their friends. > Interoperability/Federation is something the average user doesn't understand and won't even bother too as long as their basic needs are already comfortably fulfilled. This is why it would be incredibly helpful for a big app to start supporting different protocols. If signal becomes THE app for connecting with friends (no matter if they use icq, irc, email, jabber, etc), it might come to a point where people rather use Signal, because that's the app that can reach ALL your friends. At this point, iMessage would either die, or also start to support open protocols. (Or more likely: Apple will ban messaging apps from the app-store)